Head: Significant Leaders (Pakal the Great) &
Accomplishments
Hands: Art, Architecture & Tech. Advances
Art
Stelas are large, elongated stone slabs covered with carvings and inscriptions and most of the time
accompanied by round altars with most of them depict the rulers of the cities they were located in,
often disguised as gods.
Lintels spanned doorways, panels, and tablets set in walls and piers of buildings and the sides of
platforms.
Wood carvings were believed to be really popular and were considered objects of idolatry but most
of them were destroyed by the Spanish colonial authorities.
Architecture
Stepped pyramids relied on intricate carved stone in order to create a stair step design and were
dedicated to a deity whose shrine sat at its peak
The heart of the Maya city had large plazas surrounded by valued governmental and religious
buildings such as the royal acropolis, great pyramid temples, and sometimes ball courts.
The Mayans had put careful attention on the directional orientation of temples and observatories so
that they were constructed in according to Maya interpretation of the orbits of the stars.
Legs: Labor Systems
Miles
Spine: Political Structure
While the Maya shared a similar worldview and ideology, they lived in individual states
that were linked together through
Ribs: Societal Infrastructure
Heart: Religious Beliefs
Ulisses
Pen: Literature
Scholars believe that Mayan writing is one of the three original writing systems in the ancient
world. Many of the rest of the writings were believed to be copied from the three original ones
the Mayan writing being one of them.
Feet: Trade routes and goods traded
The Mayans traded very much with many civilizations around them. They offered many different
types of goods, for example the most important trades were Salt, Obsidian, Jade, Turquoise,
and Cacao.
Max
What led to the decline of this empire?
There's many theories on which why the mayan empire vanished many theorists believe that
the mayans exhausted the environment causing the mayans to not be able to sustain such a
large population.
What weakened it?
There are a lot of theories for the weakening of the Mayan Civilization, but their is no solid
evidence of their demise. Some theories include serious levels of droughts causing poor amount
of vegetation and high rates of starvations. Also, they had a system of agriculture and
vegetation where their food was based on farming, in order to make room for their crops they
would cut down trees and foliage them, then they would burn the rest. This slash and burn
method wasn't very smart since it only yielded about 3 to 5 years worth of crops, and each year
they would have less and less food. This also caused deforestation. Climate change is another
theory meaning that deforestation caused the earth to heat up more, making the droughts more
severe and long lasting. All of this affected their water supply and vegetation. A final theory is
that diseases unknown to the mayans brought by the spanish explorers could have caused the
decline of the civilization. Once the diseases spread like the smallpox ,it killed many Mayans
since they didn't had no natural immunity to those kinds of diseases.
What led to their demise?
Be creative in your delivery
Its disappearance was mysterious
Classic Mayan cities were abandoned
The reason for the decline is unknown
Citation
Maya. (n.d.). Retrieved October 5, 2015, from [Link]
Mayan Art and Architecture - Crystalinks. (n.d.). Retrieved October 5, 2015, from
[Link]
[Link]
